"I Am the Good Shepherd"

"I Am the Good Shepherd"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 26, 2015; 4 Easter, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

1 John 3:16-24 – We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

John 10:11-18 – Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away -- and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father."

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Did you hear the intake of breath when Jesus said that? It must have been a scandal originally when Jesus said, "I am." You see, that is God's name. A Word too holy to be spoken, according to Jewish practice. Maybe you will notice in blogs or in newspaper columns, a sensitive writer will type G_d, refusing the type all three letters as an act of reverence and respect to God's holy name given to Moses at the burning bush. "I am." Words you just don't say in polite, Jewish company.

"I am the good shepherd," says Jesus. This is God-talk. And all sorts of images fly through the consciousness of a thoughtful Jewish listener. From the Psalms, "God is my shepherd." "[God] will tend the flock like a shepherd," sings Isaiah. "[God] will gather the lambs in [God's] arms; carry them in [the divine] bosom, and gently lead those that are with young."[i] Over and over the Hebrew people declared with confident faith that God cares for us like a good shepherd, who leads us to green pastures and still waters where we can safely rest, where our souls may be revived, where we will fear no evil.

Just to make sure you don't miss the point—that this is God-talk—Jesus ends this chapter in John's gospel with a profound statement: "The Father and I are one." "I am the good shepherd… The Father and I are one." Language like this is why the religious authorities believed Jesus deserved to die. They heard blasphemy in Jesus' words. Jesus spoke of himself with "I am" God language. He asserted further, "The Father and I are one." Finally he brought it all full circle and spoke to any other human beings within earshot, telling them all that "you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you… Abide in me as I abide in you."[ii] Wonderful! Or, blasphemy. Jesus sees himself in complete union with God and with us, all humanity dwelling in an intimate union with the divine life and love.

So the God-talk becomes human-talk. Since we are in Jesus and Jesus is in us, we are also the good shepherd. And maybe this language was a little less uncomfortable to his listeners. Because in many places, the Hebrew scriptures use the metaphor of shepherd as a characteristic of leadership—government is supposed to be like a good shepherd. The shepherd-king David is the great example. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah spoke words of condemnation to governments that failed to care for their people like a good shepherd.

Jesus picked up this tradition dramatically in his parable about the nations. It is his consummate statement about government: What is good government? What is bad government? How does God judge the nations? Again the metaphor of sheep appears: the parable of the sheep and goats. The good nations, the sheep, are those who have behaved like good shepherds: they have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, visited the prisoner.

Jesus explains that we are to imitate God's priorities. God wants our focus to be on the vulnerable, the lost sheep. The good shepherd leaves the comfortable 99 and goes to rescue the 1 in 100 who is in danger. The good shepherd risks for the sake of the vulnerable. Not like the calculating hired hand, who looks to his own safety and self-interest first, who runs to save himself when the wolf comes.

It is a high and challenging calling. Today's reading from 1st John puts it this way: Since Jesus laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for one another. John asks, "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?"

I can tell you, these kinds of scriptures trouble me, because so much of the time I'm not like the good shepherd. I don't lay down my life for another, and I set pretty wide margins around the degree of help I'm willing to give, or the time I will invest in the needs of the 1 in 100. Maybe you also find these words convicting.

That's where John's other words are consoling. "Whenever our hearts condemn us, …God is greater than our hearts." God knows everything, John reminds us. God knows our selfishness and smallness. And yet God loves us infinitely—accepts and forgives us with divine generosity. God hopes to assure us of our security so deeply, that we can relax and participate in the work of the good shepherd, knowing that we can't fail beyond the arms of God's restoration.

Remember Peter. The leader of the disciples. At the crucial moment, when he most needed to take a stand, to be a leader, he cravenly denied Jesus three times. How that must have depressed him. How his heart must have accused him. I'll bet he asked himself a million times, "What if…?" But the past doesn't change. He failed, and there was nothing he could do to change the facts.

The past doesn't change, but its meaning can change.

Some time later, after Peter had returned to Galilee, to his old work of fishing, Jesus came and asked Peter three times, "Peter, do you love me?" And three times Peter affirmed what Jesus knew was in his heart, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you." And three times Jesus empowered Peter with a commission: "Feed my lambs… Tend my sheep… Feed my sheep." And Peter was restored.[iii]

Jesus is the good shepherd whose intention is not to lose even one sheep. He looks out beyond the horizon of those who may hear his voice today. "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."[iv] In John's gospel Jesus speaks yet another word of universal salvation and victory, like so many other similar words in scripture.

God's love is greater than our sheepy failures. God is greater than our hearts, especially when our hearts condemn us. God's intention is reunion and union. All humanity living together in love. One-hundred percent of the sheep safe and secure; not a single sheep lost. Nurture for all—the shelter of the sheepfold, green pastures, still waters, goodness and mercy. This is God's will for all. This is God's mission for humanity.

So, little lambs. Relax. You are utterly safe. You are loved and cared for by the divine good shepherd who loves you whether you are lost or found. From the security your rest in the strong arms of the shepherd, you are empowered by Jesus to his same mission, for he abides in you and you in him.

Feed the lambs; tend the sheep. It's all really pretty simple – love one another.

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[i] Isaiah 40:11

[ii] John 14:20, 15:4a

[iii] John 21

[iv] John 10:16

"I want my Supper!"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 5, 2015; Easter Sunday, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Mark 16:1-8 – When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already \been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

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There's a story that caught my attention the other day. It's from a man who grew up in some privilege in Hungary many years ago. As a little boy, he loved dinner. He loved to go into the dining room and sit in front of the big plates. The maid would come in and begin with serving him soup. One evening he went downstairs to the dining room, and it was in an uproar. Jews had been fleeing across the border from Russia, and his grandfather had gone to the railway station and brought home the ones he had found there. The boy didn't know what was going on. There were old men with skull caps in the living room; mothers with nursing babies in the corners of the dining room. The boy was upset, and threw a fit. "I want my supper!" he cried. "I want my supper!" One of the maids brought him a piece of bread. He threw it on the ground and screamed, "I want my supper!" The grandfather happened to enter the room then and heard him. The old man bent down, picked up the piece of bread, kissed it, and gave it to the little boy. He ate the bread.[i]

That little boy is me. I'm so privileged. And so wrapped up in my own stuff. I like things to go the way I like them to go. Maybe you're a little bit that way too. When they don't go the way I want them to, I scream and pout. It's mostly invisible screaming and pouting, but my head gets full of fussiness, expecting the universe to bow to my demands, and just demands they are, I believe. Whenever I'm fixed on myself and my expectations, I'm pretty blind. I don't even see the suffering old men with skull caps and the mothers in the corners with their nursing babies. They are all around us.

Hugo of St. Victor used to say, Love is the eye! When we look at anything through the eyes of love, we see correctly, understand, and properly appropriate its mystery. The reverse is also true. When we look at anything through eyes that are jaded, cynical, jealous, or bitter, we will not see correctly, will not understand, and will not properly appropriate its mystery.[ii] Maybe that is why some saw the risen Jesus and others didn't. I know that when am wrapped up in my own self-concern, I can be pretty blind.

There's a priest named Ron Rolheiser who remembers an Easter Sunday many years ago when he was a young graduate student in San Francisco. Easter was late that year and it was a spectacularly beautiful spring day. But he really didn't see it. He was young, homesick, alone on Easter Sunday, and nursing a huge heartache. It colored everything. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday in spring, but for what he was seeing and feeling, it might as well have been midnight in the dead of winter.

Lonely and feeling pitiful he took a walk to calm his restlessness. As he entered a park, he saw a blind beggar holding a sign that read: It's spring and I'm blind! The irony woke him up. It brought him back to reality, present right before his eyes.[iii]

"Love is the eye!"

It seems to be a matter of attention, doesn't it? I notice that I am happiest, I am my best self, when I do two things: (1) when I forget myself, and (2) when I focus on the present moment. Or to put it in the negative. I notice I am most frustrated when I'm preoccupied with my own stuff, and when I am not in the present moment, either brooding over something in the past or anxious about something in the future.

Then I'm like the little boy yelling for his supper, forgetting to be grateful for the gift of life here and now, the bread of life placed in my hand as a gift.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread and identified it with his own life, with his presence. "Do this in remembrance of me," he said. On Easter evening, Luke's gospel tells how some disciples were gathered at a table near the road to Emmaus, and a stranger whom they didn't recognize took the bread, broke it, gave it to them, and their eyes were opened. They knew him in the breaking of the bread.

Christians have known Christ present in the breaking of the bread for over two thousand years now. Love is the eye that sees him in the gathered community on this beautiful Easter. If we can but see, love incarnate comes to us, accepts us completely just the way we are, blesses us with the divine kiss of peace, and places in our hand the bread of life.

In that moment past and future become one in eternal time. We are with the disciples at the Last Supper and at that table near Emmaus. We are at the eternal banquet table where we will be one with all forever. We are here and now with this wonderful gathering of humanity. Present to God; present to each other; receiving the gifts of God for the people of God.

Back in the days when death squads operated in countries like Argentina and El Salvador, "the Christians there developed a way of a very dramatic way of celebrating their faith, their hope and their resistance. At the liturgy, someone would read out the names of those killed or 'disappeared', and for each name someone would call out from the congregation, Presente, 'Here'."[iv]

When we are present, here at this Eucharist, all of creation is gathered with us: our ancestors and loved ones who have gone before us; the child who starved last night in the Nuba Mountains; Lincoln and Gandhi and MLK, Jr.; young Chris Lewis whose heart stopped last week; the passengers of Germanwings Flight 9525; the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well; Peter and Paul and Jesus himself – Presente! Here!

Take! Eat! Bring your whole self here—be present. Present yourself. Just as you are. You are welcome to the banquet feast. Jesus made it so simple, so concrete. The incarnation of God continues in space and time in ordinary food.

Richard Rohr says, Eucharist is presence encountering presence… There is nothing to prove, to protect, or to sell. It feels so empty, naked, and harmless, that all you can do is be present. The Eucharist is telling us that God is the food and all we have to do is provide the hunger. Somehow we have to make sure that each day we are hungry, that there's room inside of us for another presence. If you are filled with your own opinions, ideas, righteousness, superiority, or sufficiency, you are a world unto yourself and there is no room for "another." ...Our only ticket or prerequisite for coming to Eucharist is hunger.

"I want my supper!"

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[i] Told by Mark Hollingsworth, Bishop of Ohio, in his Easter sermon of 2007

[ii] From Fr. Ron Rolheiser: http://liturgy.slu.edu/Triduum_Easter2012/reflections_rolheiser.html

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Rowan Williams 2004 Easter Sermon: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1647/easter-day-sermon-2004

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